The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II

by A. E. Nordenskiöld

The baths are under open sheds. Men and women all bathe in common, and in presence of both male and female spectators. They make their remarks without reserve on the diseases of the patients, even if they are of that sort about which one would not speak willingly even to his physician. Often the bath-basin is not fenced off in any way, except that it is protected from rain and sunshine by a roof resting on four posts. In such cases the bathers dress and undress in the street.

In consequence of the situation of Kusatsu at a height of 1050 metres above the sea, the winter there is very cold and windy. The town is then abandoned not only by the visitors to the baths, but also by most of the other inhabitants. Already, at the time of our visit, the number of bathers remaining was only inconsiderable. Even these were preparing to depart. During the second night that we passed at Kusatsu, our night's rest was disturbed by a loud noise from the next room. It was a visitor who was to leave the place the following morning, and who now celebrated his recovery with saki (rice-brandy) and string music.

The environs of Kusatsu are nearly uncultivated, though the vegetation is exceedingly luxuriant. It consists partly of bamboo thickets, partly of a high rich grass, above which rise solitary pines, mixed with a few oaks or chestnuts.

On the 3rd October we continued our journey to the foot of Asamayama. The road was very bad, so that even the kago bearers had difficulty in getting along. It first ran across two valleys more than 300 feet deep, occupied with close, luxuriant, bushy thickets. We then came to an elevated plain of great extent covered with unmown grass, studded with beautiful oaks and chestnuts. The plain was not turned to any account, though thousands of the industrious population could find an abundant living there by tending cattle. Farther up the oaks and chestnuts were mixed with a few birches, resembling those at home, and we came next to complete deserts, where the ground consisted of lava blocks and lava gravel, scarcely covered by any grass, and yielding nourishment only to solitary pines. This continued to the place—Rokuriga-hara—where we were to pass the night, and from which the next day we were to ascend the summit of Asamayama.

Rokuriga-hara is situated at a height of 1270 metres above the sea. There was no inn here, nor any place inhabited all the year round, but only a large open shed. This was divided into two by a passage in the middle. We settled on one side of this, making our bed as well as we could on the raised floor, and protecting ourselves from the night air with coverings which our thoughtful host at Kusatsu had lent us. On the other side of the passage our kago bearers and guide passed the night crowding round a log fire made on a stone foundation in the middle of the floor. The kago bearers were protected from the very perceptible night cold only by thin cotton blouses. In order to warm them I ordered an abundant distribution of saki, a piece of generosity that did not cost very much, but which clearly won me the undivided admiration of all the coolies. They passed the greater part of the night without sleep, with song and jest, with their saki bottles and tobacco pipes. We slept well and warmly after partaking of an abundant supper of fowl and eggs, cooked in different ways by Kok-San with his usual talent and his usual variety of dishes.

We had been informed that at this place we would hear a constant noise from the neighbouring volcano, and that hurtful gases (probably carbonic acid) sometimes accumulated in such quantities in the neighbouring woods that men and horses would be suffocated if they spent the night there. We listened in vain for the noise, and did not observe any trace of such gases. All was as peaceful as if the glowing hearth in the interior of the earth was hundreds of miles away. But we did not require the evidence of the column of smoke which was seen to use from the mountain top, which formed the goal of our visit, or of the inhabitants who survived the latest eruption, to come to the conclusion that we were in the neighbourhood of an enormous, still active volcano. Everywhere round our resting-place lay heaps of small pieces of lava which had been thrown out of the volcano (so-called lapilli), and which had not yet had time to weather sufficiently to serve as an under-stratum for any vegetation, and a little from the hut there was a solidified lava stream of great depth.

Next day, the 4th October, we ascended the summit of the mountain. At first we travelled in kago over a valley filled with pretty close wood, then the journey was continued on foot up the steep volcanic cone, covered with small lava blocks and lapilli. The way was staked out with small heaps of stones raised at a distance of about 100 metres apart. Near the crater we found at one of these cairns a little Shinto shrine, built of sticks. Its sides were only half a metre in length. Our guide performed his devotions here. One of them had already at a stone cairn situated farther down with great seriousness made some conjurations with reference to my promise to make an extra distribution of red wine, if we got good weather at the top.

As on Vesuvius, we can also on Asamayama distinguish a large exterior crater, originating from some old eruption, but now almost completely filled up by a new volcanic cone, at whose top the present crater opens. This crater has a circumference of about two kilometres, the old crater, or what the old geologists called the elevation-crater, has been much larger. The volcano is still active. For it constantly throws out "smoke," consisting of watery vapour, sulphurous acid, and probably also carbonic acid. Occasionally a perceptible smell of sulphuretted hydrogen is observed. It is possible without difficulty to crawl to the edge of the crater and glance down into its interior. It is very deep. The walls are perpendicular, and at the bottom of the abyss there are to be seen several clefts from which vapours arise. In the same way "smoke" forces its way at some places at the edge of the crater through small imperceptible cracks in the mountain. Both on the border of the crater, on its sides and its bottom there is to be seen a yellow efflorescence, which at the places which I got at to examine it consisted of sulphur. The edge of the crater is solid rock, a little-weathered augiteandesite differing very much in its nature at different places. The same or similar rocks also project at several places at the old border of the crater, but the whole surface of the volcanic cone besides consists of small loose pieces of lava, without any trace of vegetation. Only at one place the brim of the old crater is covered with an open pine wood. The volcano has also small side craters, from which gases escape. The same coarse fantasy, which still prevails in the form of the hell-dogma among several of the world's most cultured peoples, has placed the home of those of the followers of Buddha who are doomed to eternal punishment in the glowing hearths in the interior of the mountain, to which these crater-openings lead; and that the heresies of the well-meaning Bishop Lindblom have not become generally prevalent in Japan is shown among other things by this, that many of these openings are said to be entrances to the "children's hell." Neither at the main crater nor at any of the side craters can any true lava streams be seen. Evidently the only things thrown out from them have been gases, volcanic ashes, and lapilli. On the other hand, extensive eruptions of lava have taken place at several points on the side of the mountain, though these places are now covered with volcanic ashes.

After having eaten our breakfast in a cleft so close to the smoking crater that the empty bottles could be thrown directly into the bottomless deeps, we commenced our return journey. At first we took the same way as during the ascent, but afterwards held off to the right, down a much steeper and more difficult path than we had traversed before. The mountain side had here a slope of nearly forty-five degrees, and consisted of a quite loose volcanic sand, not bound together by any vegetable carpet. It would therefore have been scarcely possible to ascend to the summit of the mountain this way, but we went rapidly downwards, often at a dizzy speed, but without other inconvenience than that one now and then fell flat and rolled head-foremost down the steep slopes, and that our shoes were completely torn to tatters by the angular lava gravel. Above the mountaintop the sky was clear of clouds, but between it and the surface of the earth there spread out a thick layer of cloud which seen from above resembled a boundless storm-tossed sea, full of foaming breakers. The extensive view we would otherwise have had of the neighbouring mountain ridges from the top of Asamayama was thus concealed. Only here and there an opening was formed in the cloud, resembling a sun-spot, through which we got a glimpse of the underlying landscape. When we came to the foot of the mountain we long followed a ridge, covered with greenery, formed of an immense stream of lava, which had issued from an opening in the mountain side now refilled. This had probably taken place during the tremendous eruption of 1783, when not only enormous lava-streams destroyed forests and villages at the foot of the mountain, but the whole of the neighbouring region between Oiwake and Usui-toge, previously fertile, was changed by an ash-rain into an extensive waste. Across this large plain, infertile and little cultivated, situated at a height of 980 metres above the sea, we went without a guide to the village Oiwake, where we lodged for the night at an inn by the side of the road Nakasendo, one of the cleanest and best kept of the many well-kept inns I saw during our journey in the interior of the country.